Re: Tempus
| From: | David Peterson <digitalscream@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, March 8, 2001, 10:23 |
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In a message dated 3/7/01 6:23:36 PM, fortytwo@GDN.NET writes:
<< Older in what sense? They've all been around, in one form or another,
since whenever it was that humans began to speak. One can say that
Icelandic is more *CONSERVATIVE* than Norwegian, but they're both
equally old, being descended from proto-Germanic, which was descended
from proto-Indo-European which was descended from something or other,
possibly ultimately from proto-World, if monogenesis is correct. >>
If you're going to say that, why label languages at all? You can't even say
that Icelandic is more anything than Norwegian, because they both don't
exist; they're simply variants of your "Proto-World". So, if you are going
to put labels on these "descendants", then, yes, some are definitely older
and younger than others, and there's no way around that.
-David
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